24,155.9 km by plane
8,838.7 km by bus
1,830 km by boat
760 km by train
110 days
6 countries
2 people
We're back home! Outside the wind is howling and the rain is pouring... The perfect time to think back about our trip in tropical Asia. All the amazing places we've seen and the fun things we've done! Let me update you on our last 3 weeks in Asia!
Cambodia
Our Cambodian adventure started off well with the glorious corrupt border control in the south of Laos, where we had to pay a few dollars extra for every single, very unnecessary service. A few others on our bus protested against it but we couldn't be bothered to argue with stubborn non-English speaking Cambodian officials in the sweltering heat... so we just gave in and waited for the bus to take us on a long journey to start our whirlwind tour of Cambodia. Due to our very relaxed travelling style in the beginning of the trip, we unfortunately had to speed up the last part of our trip a bit.
The first stop in Cambodia was the town Siem Reap - the home of the famous Angkor Wat temples - where I'd already spent a week on my university trip a few years ago. In those years of absence nothing really had changed other than the addition of some new shops and a very cool new coffee shop/gallery. The main difference this time around was that instead of squeezing it all in one crazy day, we got a multiple day pass to explore the extensive temple complex of Angkor Wat on our own pace. Biking in the heat and being haunted by aggressive vendors and kids ("pineapple, lady!?","you buy postcard!", "eat here!") we explored the lesser known temples on the first day and the big ones on the second day. Wandering through the spacious halls, chambers, narrow corridors and climbing up the steep stairs - some covered with massive tree roots, some buried under rocks, and all engraved with pictures and stories of gods, animals and kings - we felt like we stepped back in time and were the first to stumble upon these amazing temples! On the second day we got up at a very early hour to bike through the darkness to witness the sun rise from behind the Angkor Wat temple, from very dark to red to purple. It was simply amazing!
From laid back Siem Reap we went to the chaos of the capital Phnom Penh: busy streets, even busier traffic, old and ugly buildings, lots of markets, garbage and trashy bars and restaurants for the white old men to hook up with the local ladies. Not really my kind of city. We learned about the country's darkest history in the Khmer Rouge genocide museum Tuol Sleng, where 20.000 people have been tortured and killed from 1975 to 1979. When seeing those empty cells and torture weapons it is so hard to imagine that some people are capable of such cruel crimes against totally innocent people... To lighten up a bit we went to find some coffee in a more trendy ex-pat neighbourhood and not only did we find coffee but also chocolate Zwarte Pieten en Sinterklaasen to celebrate Sinterklaas with!
But the main reason we went to Phnom Penh was to get our Vietnamese visas, which are pretty hard to obtain. The guesthouse owner talked us into arranging it through ‘a friend’ (in Asia, everyone always has a million ‘friends’ who can take care of things) who apparently worked for the embassy and who could do it for cheaper… After an anxious day we were very relieved to get our passports back and with a stamped visa inside. We were even more relieved when we made it through the border with no questions asked!
Vietnam
Our first destination in Vietnam was another big and busy city: Saigon, or as it’s officially called Ho Chi Minh City. If there is something that we learned in Vietnam it is that Ho Chi Minh is their all-time favourite hero, the savior of the country, and that anyone who ruled the country after him will forever stand in his shadow. Another thing we learned is that any day in Saigon could be your last. When trying to navigate and cross the streets, all you can do is just hope for the best and go! The trick is to walk in a steady pace so the motorbikes can anticipate and go around you. :) It is amazing to see how well experienced everyone is in the traffic, without there being any rules, any traffic lights or any police control. I think if anything would happen, it would usually be the fault of the tourists. All the time we had in Saigon was half a day, so we managed to survive! But I got food poisoning instead!
After all those cities we were in desperate need of quietness, so we headed for the small tourist stretch on the beach of Mui Ne. Very different from the laid back Bob Marley-style beaches we had seen before, Vietnamese beaches are more developed in a resort kind of way. Mainly to serve the large amount of trashy Russian families. Lucky us! It's pretty strange not to hear "cam on" or "thank you" but "spasiba" come out of the mouths of the Vietnamese! Our stay started off warm but on the second day the rain managed to trace us, just when we were walking on a ginormous field of red sand dunes with nothing more than a few small trees to hide under. And it continued raining until we were back in the bus for an overnight ride to Hoi An. This beautiful town in which I already spent two weeks during my university trip to do research, feels so familiar that it was a good place to reload. As travelling in Cambodia and Vietnam is definitely more exhausting than that in the previous countries, we just wanted to take it easy. That is exactly what we did: strolling around the pretty colourful streets and admiring the heritage buildings, drinking coffee at the French-style cafes and making heaps of photos. This time around I was even more fascinated by all the crumbling paint, wooden doors and shutters and narrow alleyways grown over by moss. Not to bore Tom, I would just put him in front of the camera! When walking in the market on the second day, we bumped into our French friends Yorick and Sandra and spent the rest of the afternoon and a game of pool with them in one of my favourite bars.
And then it was time to move up north again to Hue. The town itself was just ugly and noisy, but the former imperial city was pretty amazing. It was built for the Nguyen Dynasty that ruled Vietnam until 1945 and is filled with Chinese style temples and impressive buildings. Seeing lots of statues of kitschy flying dragons and old Chinese men with long moustaches instead of Buddha’s, is a bit change from the other countries we'd seen. But in Vietnam it is very hard to find anything else as their history and religion has so many Chinese influences.
Too bad that by that point Vietnam had turned pretty cold and since most things to do and most places to eat are outside or open, we spent most of our evenings bundled up in bed watching the James Bond marathon on tv, haha.
And our last (thank god!) long distance bus ride took us to the capital city of Hanoi. This time around I really got to experience and enjoy this amazing city! We explored the maze of small streets, markets and the huge variety of outdoor shops that literally sell everything from sewing materials to children's toys. But somehow they have created an order in the chaos as every streets has its own theme: one street is dedicated to selling rugs, while the next is full of candy stalls and the one after clothing. And on every street corner markets and food stalls pop-up according to the time of the day. In the morning it's all baguettes and fruit, while in the afternoon it's boiling Pho (beef noodle soup), at 4pm it's tea and sweet donuts and in the evening you hear frying pans sizzle and steam next to the fumes of the motorbikes. Awesome! This extra old-world charm makes Hanoi stand out from the other big Asian cities and almost makes you forget about the everlasting noise of honks, screams and megaphones. Almost.
When we took the sleeping train up the far north to Sapa, we experienced the real old-world Vietnam, where the local hill tribes still wear traditional clothes and many live a simple rural life, making a living of farming and producing handicrafts. The village on top of the hills was mostly covered in a thick layer of mist but when we hiked on both days to villages on lower altitudes we could peek through the clouds and see rows upon rows of rice terraces! In a way it added to the mystery of the place, and it made us feel like we were in some high altitude mountain town in the Alps. I loved all the small rural villages, where the children play outside, pigs walk in the fields and the women try to sell their hand-made handicrafts that they carry around in baskets on their back. Because all the people have to endure pretty harsh conditions, their faces are all weathered and tanned and together with their traditional colourful clothes, jewelry and scarves around their head, it makes them very beautiful.
After two days of cold and dampness we were pretty relieved to be back in warm(er) Hanoi, where we got picked up for our next and last adventure.. a boat cruise on Halong Bay! Another one of the places I’d been before, but again, I tried to have an even better experience by choosing to go on a 3 day trip instead of the common 2 day one. And that was a really good choice, as we really got to see parts of the bay outside the busy tourist areas. Halong Bay is such a beautiful place, Tom described it as Krabi and Ko Phi Phi (Thailand) on steroids! The limestone rocks are bigger, better and there is a whole bay full of them! And if you happened to be on a boat with only 4 others (like us :)) then you don’t have to share them with anyone else! We also didn’t had to share the food, so every meal was a big feast. But we got active too, actually our program was full of action: on the first day we explored the massive cave and went on a kayak trip to a quiet lagoon inhabited by monkeys, and on the second day we hiked up a viewpoint at 8 in the morning, went biking and hiking on Cat Ba National Park, followed by more kayaking and swimming (yes, we went swimming in the wintertime!) and more kayaking! After all that activeness, we enjoyed the sunset with a cold Hanoi beer from the balcony of our very fancy three star hotel on Cat Ba island. On those moments, you wish that you could go on travelling forever. Unfortunately, the next day we had to head back in we-all-have-a-dead-wish-traffic for the last day of our trip. But not before we enjoyed those last sunbeams on our skins and had those last aah-moments of astonishment on the journey back to the harbour. The perfect ending to this perfect trip!
